Inside every Labour government, however hopeless, there have always been a few sensible people struggling to govern wisely and on behalf of the British people. Among the dogmatic shouters and the virtue-signalling posers are some men and women who actually know what they are doing.
Usually, the fights between them and the militants end in tears and in the defeat of Labour at the polls.
So far, the Keir Starmer Government has been mainly dominated by the posers and the fanatics. The gutting of welfare reforms last summer, brought about by backbench rebels, revealed that the premier was becoming a hostage of his own Left wing.
He knowingly abandoned deeply necessary cuts to save his political bacon, and instead taxed and borrowed his way deeper into economic chaos.
By avoiding a direct fight, he yet again burdened future generations with unpayable debts, and strangled much of the economy with new and damaging taxation.
Much good it has done him. It certainly did not save his bacon. More and more Labour MPs now view their chosen leader as a liability, likelier to lose them their seats than to help them stay in parliament.
He only survives in office so that he can act as a sort of human sponge, absorbing punishment and derision, until he can also take the blame for whatever happens to his party in local and devolved elections in May. After he has fulfilled this function, he may not have much longer in Downing Street.
Even in this time of war and tumult, Sir Keir shows strong signs of withdrawing into his shell, perhaps already fearing the loud and sustained calls for his departure which are likely to follow those May elections.
Ms Mahmood is reportedly threatening to quit if Ms Rayner succeeds in diluting her immigration plans
Pictured: Prime Minister Keir Starmer holds a call with Emmanuel Macron on Thursday
And so the factions are beginning to form, with the disgraced but apparently undamaged ex-deputy leader Angela Rayner openly on manoeuvres. Her recent intervention, attacking Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s plans to tighten immigration rules, was a direct appeal to Labour’s ideological left.
It was a signal that, if Sir Keir can be forced to quit, Labour faces a severe, divisive struggle for its future.
Now The Mail on Sunday reports that Ms Mahmood, herself no soft touch, is threatening to quit if Ms Rayner succeeds in diluting her scheme. This is fighting talk, and many of Labour’s Red Wall MPs will back the Home Secretary.
They know very well that their party’s remaining working-class voters are sick of weakness on immigration and will desert if Labour is once again taken over by open-borders liberals.
Once, that would probably have been enough to beat off Ms Rayner. But it is no longer as simple as that. Much as Labour fears losing support to Nigel Farage’s Reform-UK, it is also being attacked fiercely on the left by the resurgent, confident Greens, still glowing from their victory in Gorton and Denton.
British politics, once mainly Red and Blue, is fast turning into a swirling kaleidoscope.
There is no modern precedent for it. We can only hope that this deepening division on the Left will work to the advantage of the Right, if only they can manage to stop fighting each other.
